The Day After Tomorrow

German-born US-based director Roland Emmerich has laid siege to New York City twice before. In the nightmare invasion fantasy Independence Day (1996), aliens were responsible for the assault that transformed the city into a battleground (with aliens from outer space standing in for aliens from other nations). In Godzilla (1998), after a nuclear mishap in the South Pacific, the famous prehistoric monster arrives via the Hudson to turn the city into Jurassic Park.

Now, in The Day After Tomorrow, it's a complaint from nature that causes the problems, and while the entire world appears to be at risk, NYC again has to bear the brunt.

Scientists have been warning governments for years of the dangers of global warming, and that's exactly what climatologist Jack (Dennis Quaid) is doing when he addresses a United Nations conference in New Delhi on the subject soon after the start of the film. The US Vice-President (Kenneth Welsh) foolishly ventures by way of a reply that he's more concerned about the fragility of the economy than the fragility of the environment.

Portents of doom abound, as reports of abrupt climate change around the world suggest a global disaster is looming. Some spectacular CGI shows Los Angeles under attack from tornadoes (the Hollywood sign is the first to go, ahem) before attention shifts to New York. In sequences now resonant of September 11, people watch their TVs in horror as skyscrapers tumble and cities face devastation. "Jack, something's happened in New York," his assistant announces, his voice filled with anguish.

Co-written by Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff, suggested in part by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber's non-fiction book The Coming Global Superstorm, and budgeted at about $US125 million, The Day After Tomorrow sets a spectacle of global disaster side by side with a soap-opera portrait of humanity. Anyone who's seen Emmerich's previous films, or other disaster movies from The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Earthquake (1974) to Deep Impact and Armageddon (both 1998), will know the drill: warnings that go unheeded, people in charge needing the help of more practical men, everyday places being turned into death traps, a family divided by the danger and trying to get back together, a budding romance or two, individual acts of heroism, and so on.

In sequences now resonant of September 11, people watch their TVs in horror as skyscrapers tumble and cities face devastation.

Here they're all very much token elements, despite Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum's attempts to conjure something out of nothing as the film's primary love interests. Emmerich is clearly much more concerned with the big picture and it's on this level that his film works best. The scenes of cities being humbled by nature's wrath are truly awesome and some good ideas have been brought to the fray, like making the New York Public Library the last refuge for some of the survivors of the initial destruction, or having an ocean liner surreally drift past on 5th Avenue.

There's also a bleakly ironic sense of humour at work in the way current international relations are turned on their heads. Because of its government's complacency about global warming, the US is stripped of its power, the centre of capitalism wiped out because of its blinkered view of how best to sustain itself. Mexico closes its borders because of the influx of American refugees seeking safer ground. And then the US announces that it's decided to forgo all Latin American debt in exchange for asylum.

For all its flaws, including a clumsily incorporated opening sequence and an unduly hasty ending, there's much to admire about The Day After Tomorrow. If only it had been able to do something more substantial with its characters.